Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Last updated February 13, 2024

Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz include treatments of the modern fairy tale (written by L Frank Baum and first published in 1900) as an allegory or metaphor for the political, economic, and social events of America in the 1890s. Scholars have examined four quite different versions of Oz: the novel of 1900,^[1] the Broadway play of 1902,^[2] the Hollywood film of 1939,^[3] and the numerous follow-up Oz novels written after 1900 by Baum and others.^[4]

The political interpretations focus on the first three, and emphasize the close relationship between the visual images and the story line to the political interests of the day. Biographers report that Baum had been a political activist in the 1890s with a special interest in the money question of gold and silver (bimetallism), and the illustrator William Wallace Denslow was a full-time editorial cartoonist for a major daily newspaper. For the 1902 Broadway production Baum inserted explicit references to prominent political characters such as then-president Theodore Roosevelt.

Monetary policy

In a 1964 article,^[5] educator and historian Henry Littlefield outlined an allegory in the book of the late-19th-century debate regarding monetary policy. According to this view, for instance, the Yellow Brick Road represents the gold standard, and the Silver Shoes (Ruby slippers in the 1939 film version) represent the Silverite's wish to maintain convertibility under a sixteen to one ratio (dancing down the road). Others ^{[ who? ]} suggest the City of Oz earns its name from the abbreviation of ounces "Oz" in which gold and silver are measured.

The thesis achieved considerable popular interest and elaboration by many scholars in history, economics and other fields,^[6] but that thesis has been challenged.^[7]^[8]^[9] Certainly the 1902 musical version of Oz, written by Baum, was for an adult audience and had numerous explicit references to contemporary politics,^[2] though in these references Baum seems just to have been "playing for laughs".^[10] The 1902 stage adaptation mentioned, by name, President Theodore Roosevelt and other political celebrities.^[11] For example, the Tin Woodman wonders what he would do if he ran out of oil. "You wouldn't be as badly off as John D. Rockefeller", the Scarecrow responds, "He'd lose six thousand dollars a minute if that happened."^[2]

Littlefield's knowledge of the 1890s was thin, and he made numerous errors, but since his article was published, scholars in history,^[8] political science,^[1] and economics^[7] have asserted that the images and characters used by Baum closely resemble political images that were well known in the 1890s. Quentin Taylor, for example, claimed that many of the events and characters of the book resemble the actual political personalities, events and ideas of the 1890s.^[11] Dorothy—naïve, young and simple—represents the American people. She is Everyman, led astray and seeking the way back home.^[11] Moreover, following the road of gold leads eventually only to the Emerald City, which Taylor sees as symbolic of a fraudulent world built on greenback paper money, a fiat currency that cannot be redeemed in exchange for precious metals.^[11] It is ruled by a scheming politician (the Wizard) who uses publicity devices and tricks to fool the people (and even the Good Witches) into believing he is benevolent, wise, and powerful when really he is a selfish, evil humbug. He sends Dorothy into severe danger hoping she will rid him of his enemy the Wicked Witch of the West. He is powerless and, as he admits to Dorothy, "I'm a very bad Wizard".^[12]

Hugh Rockoff suggested in 1990 that the novel was an allegory about the demonetization of silver in 1873, whereby "the cyclone that carried Dorothy to the Land of Oz represents the economic and political upheaval, the yellow brick road stands for the gold standard, and the silver shoes Dorothy inherits from the Wicked Witch of the East represents the pro-silver movement. When Dorothy is taken to the Emerald Palace before her audience with the Wizard she is led through seven passages and up three flights of stairs, a subtle reference to the Coinage Act of 1873 which started the class conflict in America."^[13]

Ruth Kassinger, in her book Gold: From Greek Myth to Computer Chips, purports that "The Wizard symbolizes bankers who support the gold standard and oppose adding silver to it... Only Dorothy's silver slippers can take her home to Kansas," meaning that by Dorothy not realizing that she had the silver slippers the whole time, Dorothy, or "the westerners", never realized they already had a viable currency of the people.^[14]

Social groups

Historian Quentin Taylor sees additional metaphors, including:

The Scarecrow as a representation of American farmers and their troubles in the late 19th century
The Tin Man representing the American steel industry's failures to combat increased international competition at the time.
The Cowardly Lion as a metaphor for the American military's performance in the Spanish–American War.

Taylor also claimed a sort of iconography for the cyclone: it was used in the 1890s as a metaphor for a political revolution that would transform the drab country into a land of color and unlimited prosperity. It was also used by editorial cartoonists of the 1890s to represent political upheaval.^[11]

Dorothy would represent the goodness and innocence of human kind.

Other putative allegorical devices of the book include the Wicked Witch of the West as a figure for the actual American West; if this is true, then the Winged Monkeys could represent another western danger: Native Americans. The King of the Winged Monkeys tells Dorothy, "Once we were a free people, living happily in the great forest, flying from tree to tree, eating nuts and fruit and doing just as we pleased without calling anybody master. ... This was many years ago, long before Oz came out of the clouds to rule over this land."^[10]

Baum held strong racial views towards Native American peoples, arguing for their genocidal extermination in two editorials published in his newspaper, The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer , in 1890 and 1891.^[15]^[16] However, some commenters have argued certain passages in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published almost a decade later, reflect greater nuance with regard to the plight of Native Americans, containing allegorical references to their treatment.^[17] In particular, an incident in which Dorothy and company are accosted by “policemen of the forest” and break a cow's leg and a village church while passing through a strange land “painted in the brightest colors” is suggested to refer to the 1854 Grattan Massacre, precipitated by a missing cow, and the suppression of the Ghost Dance religion respectively.^[17] Dorothy responds that they were “lucky in not doing these little people any more harm.”^[17]

Baum was also influenced by his mother-in-law, activist Matilda Joslyn Gage, who convinced him to write down his Oz stories. Gage has been cited as one of the inspirations for Dorothy, and biographers have drawn correlations between Baum's Good Witch and Gage's feminist writings.^[18]

Alternative allegory

Other writers have used the same evidence to lead to precisely opposite allegorical interpretations.^[8]

Apart from intentional symbolism, scholars have speculated on the sources of Baum's ideas and imagery. The "man behind the curtain" could be a reference to automated store window displays of the sort famous at Christmas season in big city department stores; many people watching the fancy clockwork motions of animals and mannequins thought there must be an operator behind the curtain pulling the levers to make them move (Baum was the editor of the trade magazine read by window dressers).^[19]

Additional allegories have been developed, without claims that they were originally intended by Baum. The text has been treated as a theosophical allegory.^[20] In a 2020 edition of the Rose Croix Journal, an article written by Timothy J. Ryan argues The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is "an allegory of the mystic's journey, using classic alchemical symbols and operations as Dorothy sojourns along the golden path toward reintegration and the discovery of the Philosopher's Stone."^[21] L. Frank Baum was a member of the Theosophical Society and a student of Helena Blavatsky, along with his mother-in-law Matilda Joslyn Gage, the famous American suffragist. The paper draws parallels from theosophical teachings and Baum's own life to suggest the Emerald City is an allusion to the Emerald Tablet, and that Dorothy's journey through Oz closely follows the seven stages of alchemy, from calcination to coagulation.

Another direct analogy for "the man behind the curtain" is Mark Hanna, the political strategist behind the national realignment in the Election of 1896.

In 1993, W. Geoffrey Seeley recast the story as an exercise in geo-political treachery, suggesting the supposed "Good Witch Glinda" took advantage of the Witch of the East's sudden and unintentional death. Seizing on an opportunity for all-power, Glinda used the innocent Dorothy to unseat the remaining powers of the land, the Witch of the West and the Wizard of Oz, leaving herself as undisputed master of all four corners of Oz: North, East, West and South (and presumably the Emerald City). She even showed her truest "Machiavellian brilliance" by allowing the story to be entitled after the weakest of her three opponents. Glinda could have told Dorothy that the "silver slippers would easily do the job [of returning Dorothy to her beloved home] but decided that a destabilizing force such as Dorothy might be just the thing to shake up her other rival [The Wizard of Oz]."^[22]

Related Research Articles

Lyman Frank Baum was an American author best known for his children's fantasy books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, part of a series. In addition to the 14 Oz books, Baum penned 41 other novels, 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and at least 42 scripts. He made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen; the 1939 adaptation of the first Oz book became a landmark of 20th-century cinema.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a 1900 children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. It is the first novel in the Oz series of books. A Kansas farm girl named Dorothy ends up in the magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home by a cyclone. Upon her arrival in the magical world of Oz, she learns she cannot return home until she has destroyed the Wicked Witch of the West.

The yellow brick road is a central element in the 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by American author L. Frank Baum. The road also appears in the several sequel Oz books such as The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904) and The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913).

The Marvelous Land of Oz: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, commonly shortened to The Land of Oz, published in July 1904, is the second of L. Frank Baum's books set in the Land of Oz, and the sequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). This and the next 34 Oz books of the famous 40 were illustrated by John R. Neill. The book was made into an episode of The Shirley Temple Show in 1960, and into a Canada/Japan co-produced animated series of the same name in 1986. It was also adapted in comic book form by Marvel Comics; once in 1975 in the Marvel Treasury of Oz series, and again in an eight issue series with the first issue being released in November 2009. Plot elements from The Marvelous Land of Oz are included in the 1985 Disney feature film Return to Oz.

Dorothy Gale is a fictional character created by American author L. Frank Baum as the protagonist in many of his Oz novels. She first appears in Baum's classic 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and reappears in most of its sequels. In addition, she is the main character in various adaptations, notably the classic 1939 film adaptation of the novel, The Wizard of Oz.

Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs is a fictional character in the Land of Oz created by American author L. Frank Baum. The character was further popularized by a stage play and several films, including the classic 1939 film and the 2013 prequel adaptation.

Princess Ozma is a fictional character from the Land of Oz, created by American author L. Frank Baum. She appears in every book of the Oz series except the first, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).

The Emerald City is the capital city of the fictional Land of Oz in L. Frank Baum's Oz books, first described in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).

Nick Chopper, the Tin Woodman, is a character in the fictional Land of Oz created by American author L. Frank Baum. He first appeared in his 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and reappeared in many other subsequent Oz books in the series. In late 19th-century America, men made out of various tin pieces were used in advertising and political cartoons. Baum, who was editing a magazine on decorating shop windows when he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was inspired to invent the Tin Woodman by a figure he had built out of metal parts for a shop display.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scarecrow (Oz)</span> Character in L. Frank Baums fictional Land of Oz

The Scarecrow is a character in the fictional Land of Oz created by American author L. Frank Baum and illustrator W.W. Denslow. In his first appearance, the Scarecrow reveals that he lacks a brain and desires above all else to have one. In reality, he is only two days old and merely naïve. Throughout the course of the novel, he proves to have the brains he seeks and is later recognized as "the wisest man in all of Oz," although he continues to credit the Wizard for them. He is, however, wise enough to know his own limitations and all too happy to hand the rulership of Oz, passed to him by the Wizard, to Princess Ozma, and become one of her trusted advisors, though he typically spends more time having fun than advising.

The Wicked Witch of the West is a fictional character who appears in the classic children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), created by American author L. Frank Baum. In Baum's subsequent Oz novels, it is the Nome King who is the principal villain; the Wicked Witch of the West is rarely even referred to again after her death in the first book.

The Wicked Witch of the East is a fictional character created by American author L. Frank Baum. She is a crucial character but appears only briefly in Baum's classic children's series of Oz novels, most notably The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).

Mombi is a fictional character in L. Frank Baum's classic children's series of Oz Books. She is the most significant antagonist in the second Oz book The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), and is alluded to in other works. Mombi plays a very important role in the fictional history of Oz.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a 1910 American silent fantasy film and the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made by the Selig Polyscope Company without Baum's direct input. It was created to fulfill a contractual obligation associated with Baum's personal bankruptcy caused by The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, from which it was once thought to have been derived. It was partly based on the 1902 stage musical The Wizard of Oz, though much of the film deals with the Wicked Witch of the West, who does not appear in the musical.

The Wizard of Oz was a 1902 musical extravaganza based on the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Although Baum is the credited bookwriter, Glen MacDonough was hired on as jokewriter after Baum had finished the script, and the book was largely ghostwritten by a man named Finnegan. Much of the original music was by Paul Tietjens and has been mostly lost, although it was still well-remembered and in discussion at MGM in 1939 when the classic film version of the story was made. The show's history is covered in more than 100 pages of the book Oz Before the Rainbow; L Frank Baum's 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' on stage and screen to 1939 by Mark Evan Swartz.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jellia Jamb</span> Fictional character

Jellia Jamb is a fictional character from the classic children's series of Oz books by American author L. Frank Baum. She is first introduced in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), as the head maid who works in the royal palace of the Emerald City which is the imperial capital of the Land of Oz. In later books, Jellia eventually becomes Princess Ozma's favorite servant out of the Emerald City's staff administration. She is also the protagonist of Ruth Plumly Thompson's novel Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz. Her name is a pun on the phrase "Jelly or jam?"

The Silver Shoes are the magical shoes that appear in L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as heroine Dorothy Gale's transport home. They are originally owned by the Wicked Witch of the East but passed to Dorothy when her house lands on the Witch. At the end of the story, Dorothy uses the shoes to transport her back to her home in Kansas, but when she arrives at her destination finds the shoes have fallen off en route.

Oz Park is a public park in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of North Side, Chicago. It is located at 2021 North Burling Street, at the corner of Lincoln and Webster, just south of the Lincoln, Halsted, and Fullerton intersection.

<i>The Wizard of Oz</i> (1942 musical) 1942 musical commissioned by the Muny

The Wizard of Oz is a musical commissioned by The Muny based on the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, using the film's songs by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg. The book of the musical is by Frank Gabrielson, who would later write an adaptation of The Marvelous Land of Oz (1960) for Shirley Temple (1960).

References

1 2 Ritter, Gretchen (August 1997). "Silver slippers and a golden cap: L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and historical memory in American politics". Journal of American Studies . 31 (2): 171–203. doi:10.1017/s0021875897005628. JSTOR 27556260. S2CID 144369952.
1 2 3 Swartz, Mark Evan (2000). Oz Before the Rainbow: L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" on Stage and Screen to 1939. The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6477-1.
↑ Olson, James (2001). Historical Dictionary of the Great Depression, 1929–1940. Greenwood. pp. 315–316. ISBN 0-313-30618-4.
↑ Hearn, Michael Patrick, ed. (2000). The Annotated Wizard of Oz . W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-04992-2.
↑ Littlefield, Henry (1964). "The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism" (PDF). American Quarterly . 16 (1): 47–58. doi:10.2307/2710826. JSTOR 2710826 . Retrieved 2016-05-20.
↑ Sanders, Mitch (July 1991). "Setting the Standards on the Road to Oz". The Numismatist . American Numismatic Association: 1042–1050. Archived from the original on 14 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-10-28.
1 2 Hansen, Bradley A. (2002). "The Fable of the Allegory: The Wizard of Oz in Economics" (PDF). Journal of Economic Education. 33 (3): 254–264. doi:10.1080/00220480209595190. JSTOR 1183440. S2CID 15781425. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 April 2003. Retrieved 2011-10-28.
1 2 3 Parker, David B. (1994). "The Rise and Fall of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a 'Parable on Populism'". Journal of the Georgia Association of Historians. 15: 49–63. Archived from the original on 2013-09-25. Retrieved 2011-10-28.
↑ Gjovaag, Eric (2006). "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Frequently Asked Questions: About The Oz Books". The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Website. Retrieved 29 September 2017.
1 2 Dighe, Ranjit S., ed. (2002). The historian's Wizard of Oz: reading L. Frank Baum's classic as a political and Monetary Allegory. ISBN 0-275-97418-9.
1 2 3 4 5 Taylor, Quentin P. (2004-12-02). "Money and Politics in the Land of Oz". The Independent Institute . Retrieved 2011-10-28.
↑ Baum, L. Frank; Denslow, William Wallace; Hearn, Michael Patrick (2000), Denslow, William Wallace; Hearn, Michael Patrick (eds.), The Annotated Wizard of Oz: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, W.W. Norton & Company, p. 271, ISBN 978-0393049923
↑ Hugh Rockoff, “The ‘Wizard of Oz’ as a Monetary Allegory,” Journal of Political Economy 98.4 (1990), as summarized by William L. Silber in The Story of Silver: How the White Metal Shapes America and the Modern World (Princeton University Press, 2019), 25–26.
↑ Kassinger, Ruth (2003). Gold: From Greek Myth to Computer Chips. 21st Century. ISBN 0-7613-2110-1.
↑ Byrd, Jodi A. (Spring 2007). "'Living My Native Life Deadly': Red Lake, Ward Churchill, and the Discourses of Competing Genocides". American Indian Quarterly. 31 (2): 310–332 [319]. doi:10.1353/aiq.2007.0018. S2CID 161516062.
↑ Baum, L. Frank. Hastings, A. Waller (ed.). "'The Sitting Bull Editorial' in L. Frank Baum's Editorials on the Sioux Nation". Saturday Pioneer. republished online at Northern.edu. Archived from the original on August 13, 2008. Retrieved November 9, 2016.
1 2 3 Hunter Liguore (Spring 2017). "Sympathy or Racism? L. Frank Baum on Native Americans". Great Plains Quarterly. 37 (2): 77–82. doi:10.1353/gpq.2017.0017. S2CID 164346964.
↑ Kelly, Kate (2022). Ordinary Equality: The Fearless Women and Queer People Who Shaped the U.S. Constitution and the Equal Rights Amendment. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith. p. 54. ISBN 9781423658726.
↑ Culver, Stuart (1988). "What Manikins Want: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows and Interiors". Representations. 21: 97–116. doi:10.1525/rep.1988.21.1.99p02045.
↑ Algeo, John (1988). "Oz and Kansas: A Theosophical Quest". In Gannon, Susan R.; Thompson, Ruth Anne (eds.). Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Conference of the Children's Literature Association. Kansas City: University of Missouri. pp. 135–139. Retrieved 2011-10-28.
↑ The Alchemical World of Oz
↑ Seeley, W. Geoffrey (1993-12-26). "The Geo-Politics of Oz". The Washington Post . Archived from the original on 2022-08-17. Retrieved 2022-08-17.

Bibliography

Barrett, Laura (March 22, 2006). "From Wonderland to Wasteland: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Great Gatsby, and the New American Fairy Tale". Papers on Language and Literature. Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Retrieved 2011-10-28.
Baum, L. Frank. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), online edition with black and white illustrations; online version from Gutenberg, without illustrations; online version with color illustrations
Blythe, Martin (2006). "Oz is China: A Political Fable of Chinese Dragons and White Tigers". Sexual Fables. Retrieved 2011-10-28.
Bernstein, Robin (2011). Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-8708-3.
Clanton, Gene (1991). Populism: The Humane Preference in America, 1890–1900 . Twayne Pub. ISBN 0-8057-9744-0.
Culver, Stuart (1992). "Growing Up in Oz". American Literary History. 4 (4): 607–628. doi:10.1093/alh/4.4.607. JSTOR 489788.
Erisman, Fred L. (1968). "L. Frank Baum and the Progressive Dilemma". American Quarterly. 20 (3): 616–623. doi:10.2307/2711021. JSTOR 2711021.
Gessel, Michael; Koupal, Nancy Tystad; Erisman, Fred (2001). "The Politics of Oz: a Symposium". South Dakota History. 31 (2): 146–168. ISSN 0361-8676.
Gilead, Sarah (March 1991). "Magic Abjured: Closure in Children's Fantasy Fiction". PMLA. 106 (2): 277–293. doi:10.2307/462663. JSTOR 462663. S2CID 163195775.
Griswold, Jerry (1987). "There's No Place But Home: The Wizard of Oz". The Antioch Review . 45 (4): 462–475. doi:10.2307/4611799. JSTOR 4611799.
Jahangir, Rumeana (2009-03-17). "Secrets of the Wizard of Oz". BBC News Magazine. Retrieved 2011-10-28.
Jensen, Richard (1971). The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896 . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-39825-0. chapter 10
Karp, Andrew (1998). "Utopian Tension in L. Frank Baum's Oz". Utopian Studies. Retrieved 2011-10-28.
Kim, Helen M. (1996). "Strategic Credulity: Oz as Mass Cultural Parable". Cultural Critique (33): 213–233. doi:10.2307/1354392. JSTOR 1354392.
Leach, William. Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (1993), pp. 248–260. excerpt and text search
Leach, William. "The Clown from Syracuse: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum. " introduction to Leach, ed. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 1991. pp. 1–34.
Maceda, María Teresa Gibert. "Margaret Atwood’s Visions and Revisions of 'The Wizard of Oz'." Journal of English Studies 17 (2019): 175–195.
Nesbet, Anne (2001). "In Borrowed Balloons: The Wizard of Oz and the History of Soviet Aviation". The Slavic and East European Journal. American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. 45 (1): 80–95. doi:10.2307/3086411. JSTOR 3086411.
Riley, Michael O. (1997). Oz and Beyond: The Fantasy World of L. Frank Baum. University of Kansas Press. ISBN 0-7006-0832-X.
Ritter, Gretchen (1999). Goldbugs and Greenbacks: The Anti-Monopoly Tradition and the Politics of Finance in America. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-65392-4.
Rockoff, Hugh (August 1990). "The 'Wizard of Oz' as a Monetary Allegory" (PDF). Journal of Political Economy. 98 (4): 739–760. doi:10.1086/261704. JSTOR 2937766. S2CID 153606670. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-11-19.
Velde, Francois R. (2002). "Following the Yellow Brick Road: How the United States Adopted the Gold Standard" (PDF). Economic Perspectives. 26 (2). doi:10.2139/ssrn.377760. S2CID 153212796. SSRN 377760.
Ziaukas, Tim (1998). "100 Years of Oz: Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' as Gilded Age Public Relations". Public Relations Quarterly. Retrieved 2011-10-28.